Education minister Bratya Basu on Friday accused governor C.V. Ananda Bose of “intimidation” so registrars of state-aided universities would abstain from a meeting with the minister.
Only 12 registrars out of 31 attended the meeting on Friday, Basu said, accusing the governor, the chancellor of state-aided universities, of intimidation a day after Bose accused the education department of “threat/intimidation” that allegedly forced five officiating vice-chancellors handpicked by him to resign.
At least one VC confirmed to The Telegraph that he communicated a message from the chancellor to the university’s registrar not to attend Basu’s meeting on Friday.
“Only 12 out of the 31 registrars of the state-aided universities attended Friday’s meeting. Why did the rest not come? The VCs handpicked by the chancellor are saying that Raj Bhavan has instructed them to tell the registrars to abstain from the meeting. Registrars are saying they are being threatened over WhatsApp. They are being told not to attend the meeting. So many of them could not muster the courage to attend the meeting,” Basu told a news conference after the meeting.
“We have these text messages from Raj Bhavan and the VCs asking the registrars not to turn up at the meeting. We will place these at an appropriate forum at an appropriate time. Who issues the threat? Who carries out the intimidation covertly?” Basu asked.
A registrar sent a communication to the education department explaining that his university’s VC had cited an instruction from the chancellor to prevent him from attending the meeting.
Chancellor Bose in a video message on Thursday said five officiating VCs told him in confidence before they resigned that “the education ministry was intimidating them” and “senior IAS officers were pressurising them”.
An official of the department said on Friday that Basu sought to use the abstention by the registrars to suggest that intimidation comes from Raj Bhavan not Bikash Bhavan, the headquarters of the education department.
The universities whose registrars stayed away from Friday’s meeting included Calcutta University, Presidency University, Rabindra Bharati University, Sanskrit College and University and West Bengal State University Barasat.
The higher education department sent a communication to all the abstaining registrars on Friday evening asking them to explain why they did not attend the meeting.
Raj Kumar Kothari, officiating VC of both Sanskrit College and University and West Bengal State University, Barasat, told The Telegraph: “I communicated a message from the chancellor about not attending the meeting at Bikash Bhavan to the registrars of the two campuses and they must have communicated the same to the education department. The instruction of the chancellor was executed.”
Calls and text messages to Santa Datta, officiating VC of Calcutta University, seeking to know if she prevented CU registrar Debasish Das from attending the meeting following advice from the chancellor, went unanswered.
Presidency University’s officiating VC Subhro Kamal Mukherjee declined to comment when The Telegraph sought to know if he prevented registrar Debajyoti Konar from attending the meeting following advice from the chancellor.
Mukherjee, former Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court, is also the officiating VC of Rabindra Bharati University.
“We give grants annually to the state-aided universities from the planned funds to improve their expenditure. This grant is given in accordance with the West Bengal Universities (Control of Expenditure) 1976 Act. So the meeting, which the registrars were asked to attend, was called following an Act. We did not call this to satisfy our ego. By preventing the registrars from attending, is the honourable chancellor not acting in contravention of law?” said Bratya.
The minister said his department has written to VCs asking them “to provide necessary details of any such alleged threats/intimidation faced” by them. Bose in his video had said five VCs resigned after threats from the education department.
Bratya said: “Let them respond. But I wonder when the chancellor came to know of such a threat why he did not lodge a police complaint. Why did he not think of informing the department? Are the VCs kids that they would simply resign because someone threatened them?”